In distributed client/server environments, administrators often have difficulty defining a user's home directory and then defining how that home directory is made available to other computers and systems that the same user might access. A user's home directory can be local to the computer that the user is logged into or it can be a mount point to a remote file system that actually hosts the real home directory for the user.
Existing remote file system or directory mounting takes one of two approaches. In a first approach, a customized script is installed as a local file on a user's machine. The customized script identifies where to mount the user's home directory from. With this technique, any changes to a user's home directory within the network necessitate that the user's machine be visited and that a new customized script be installed thereon.
The second approach uses a generic script referred to as an automount service or script. The automount service uses a file which is obtained from a remote database. Current databases support Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), Network Information System (NIS), Hesoid, and a local file system. The file contains map data which will instruct the automount service on how to mount the user's home directory. The automount service is more generic than the customized script approach; however, the automount script approach still requires modification on the user's local device to install the initial file that identifies the remote service and also requires modification if the remote service is changed to a different remote service. The automount service can also be started by the user typing in the correct command sequence.
Moreover, both existing mounting techniques are implemented as separate and distinct processes from a user's network login. That is, a user logs into a network through one service and then another service (customized script or automount script) executes in order to mount the user's network home directory. This means that a variety of information must be physically managed and maintained on user machines and also managed on one or more locations which are external to the user machines.
Thus, improved techniques for remote resource mounting are needed.